Scheduling meetings can be a real pain, especially if you’re on the go and only have access to your calendar on your phone. If you use Google Calendar on Android, however, scheduling meetings is about to get a little easier, thanks to the new “find a time” tool.
The tool essentially looks at the calendars for each participant of the meeting, and gives a few possible meeting times, ranking them by how convenient it thinks they’ll be for those involved.
To be clear, this feature is already available on desktop, but it’s now available on Android as well. Similar to the desktop version, Google says the feature will work across time zones, and if it can’t find a time to schedule the meeting, it will figure out which of the conflicting meetings could be most easily rescheduled.
“‘Find a time’ makes suggestions, but you’re still in control. You can tap to see everyone’s schedule at a glance — perfect for making sure the timing works for all,” wrote product manager Stella Schieffer, in a blog post. “And if you manage someone else’s calendar, you can use the feature to schedule meetings on their behalf as well.”
It’s also important to note that the feature is only available to Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education users, so unfortunately, casual users of Calendar won’t be able to take advantage of the feature just yet. Of course, this does make sense — the feature will obviously only work in organizations where employees share their calendars with each other. While it’s currently only available on Android, Google says it will be available to iOS soon.
Of course, bringing this feature to mobile certainly makes sense. People are increasingly using their smartphones as a way to organize their day, and features like this make it easier and easier.
